Liv - Art School Journey

[liviuc]

G'day everyone!

I'm Liv, an engineer turned creative technologist from Sydney, Australia.

I completed a PhD in Computer Science several years ago, and my talents with design and multimedia have always helped me make a splash with my work. I love programming and cloud technology, because I love creating complex, functional, elegant things out of nothing. However, I've found the "real world" experience of working in big tech and medical research a lot less rewarding than it was during my university days, when I could pair all the dry computational disciplines with a healthy dose of the humanities, history and arts.

As such, I've recently made a big career change, stepping away from my comfortable niche to launch myself into a new industry, Film and VFX, where I can do what I love but also surround myself with artists and creative professionals, plus get access to all the coolest techno-visual toys, and expand my artistic horizons. =)

I used to scribble for fun as a kid, but as an adult I've struggled a lot with drawing: I'm highly technical, and a perfectionist, and the "vagueness" of art alongside the experience of failing again and again and again when I'm used to clear, precise answers has made it next to impossible to learn to draw and paint.

Despite years of pushing myself extremely hard, I've experienced constant disappointment, had art teachers give up on me, and well-meaning people in my life tell me I just don't have the talent. For a while, I was convinced that something about my schooling had 'broken' the creative part of me, and gave up on ever becoming an artist.

Only, I loved it too much to quit, and I kept at it anyway, despite practically driving myself mad in so doing... and little by little, with the resources available online, the inspiration of amazing friends and colleagues, and the help of a very patient mentor, I've learned to find my own way forward, and begun to see results.

My goal is the same as it's always been: get the complex, intangible things out of my head and out into the real world. I have always loved art, and I have feelings, stories, characters and worlds aplenty to share.

Nowadays, I feel like my skills are finally progressing to a place where I can start to do justice to some of those visions and ideas. With your help, and Marc's, I hope to finally take my skills to the professional level.

Thank you in advance for your time and your feedback -- I hope that I can help you, too, to achieve your artistic dreams!

[liviuc]

I have some specific goals that I want to achieve, so I don't know yet whether I will be taking the classes in order, or bounce around a bit, but to help chronicle my journey, I'll be sharing some of my practice and best works as I go.

To begin with, here's a starting point and milestone: the book cover I painted for my brother's Kickstarter RPG, Grey Cells -- which is also, happily, my first piece of professional work:

[chiara.arcidiaco]

Welcome to art school Liv!!
What an awesome presentation!! Your life journey is so interesting, and I wanted to say that I think that you will feel good here.
You said that you're highly technical and here in Art school we get along with strong basics, such as anatomy (where you can't invent anything ) or also physics of material and how the light behaves. This are just examples but I wanted to say that I think that Marc wants to teach us going to the deep meaning of things, and not "it works like this" without explanation. Awesome for a more scientific mind hahah

Waiting to see your next works!! Just this one looks awesome

[liviuc]

Thanks so much, Chiara - I appreciate you dropping by my thread.

That's exactly why I joined up with Art School, in fact: Marc's practical approach, his technical skills and the structured way he approaches anatomy, colour and light. I've learned how important emotion is to the creative process, and I don't discount it, but I always feel a bit more at home with teachers who deeply analyse their own process, and know how to extract practical insights. =)

[Brett88]

Talent must run in the family. I, for various reasons, got my hands on a pre-launch copy of Little Grey Cells and was always disappointed we never got to play it.

I remember seeing the art work on the front and liking it. It fit a lot better than a lot of Kickstarter RPG book art I've seen and I'm just a sucker for that era visually as well which probably helped.

[Frygidal]

I have enjoyed reading your story so much - I will finish next year my last term in Computer Science to get an engineer but I guess it will be the end of my university education - my great graphics teacher convinced me that art career is a thing and then I am trying my best to get one, so I think we will find common ground!

For the art itself it looks really cool and it really suits its purpose you have made it for so that the most important thing.
As my feedback 2 things stands out for me:
1) the tie is negating the gravity laws (that's pretty technical, hyhy)
2) you have misplaced some of the cast shadows, you have made them like he was standing outdoor in the sun and I understand the glass in the door is the source of the light in this room - there may be some exceptions I don't know about but light always comes through the windows like a point light not sun light so it goes from the center of the glass in every direction, so book and camera are right but hands shadows would look much different. And it is hard to tell what time it is, the mood seems to be like the evening with dim light coming but shadows are extra sharp like in full light.

Hope it helps and welcome!

[liviuc]

Wow, that's really great subtle feedback -- the issues with how I'm doing colouring (which make everything I paint look "outdoors") is something that's taken me months to notice, and which I still haven't quite fixed (because the way I do ambient occlusion, I tend to kindof apply "camera light source" and sky-lighting without meaning to). I wish I'd had a chance to hear from you sooner -- it's impressive you can pick up such subtle details. Speaks to your skills and the quality of this course. =D

[liviuc]

Oh wow -- small world, @Brett88. I could ask him to throw you an invite to one of his weekend games, I'm sure he'd love to hear from you again, and he's wrapping up work on the Fantasy supplement, so there's lots to playtest!

Actually, I'm hoping to do the cover for that one too. Might put together some concepts for that as part of this course!

[Brett88]

Even smaller world when I mention that I've only just signed up and this was literally my first forum click

Online perhaps but I'm currently moving house amongs a lot of other things that will make my scheduling a nightmare for quite a while. But I will keep a look out for the art you do for the rest.

[IndrawnArt]

Hey there Liv and welcome to ArtSchool. It's really interesting what you did so far and what your goals and dreams are.

I really like the image you drew for your brother's Kickstarter. There's a lot to discover in your image.

I'd slightly redraw his tie though. It seems like it is not influenced by gravity, but it looks like it sticks to his shirt. I hope it's okay that I pointed that out.

Great to have you here!

[liviuc]

Constructive feedback is very welcome, thanks -- two of you have pointed that out, now, so I'll definitely have to straighten it up for the second edition! =D

[liviuc]

Last week Marc gave me some positive feedback on my ability to accurately identify 3D forms and angles in figure photos, and speed is a real challenge for me, so this week I'll be focusing on gesture drawing, and starting a daily practice as suggested in his lesson, trying 30 minutes of quick gestures per day.

These ones are 30 second poses. I'll be posting a bunch of them, so hopefully you folks won't get too sick of gestures. =)

It's a pretty challenging exercise. Hope to see some improvement after a week or two!

[WeirdOwl]

I agree, it is very challenging. And annoying. I've been slacking. Good job on doing those, you're already capturing the poses. Volumes will come later.

[liviuc]

Keeping it up with the 30 second gestures.

I tried to capture a bit of the volume this time, where I could get it in fast enough.

I find that certain angles go real fast for me, and others confuse me and I take so long on line-of-action and joints and such that I run out of time.

Actually, it's a great way to figure out what I need to study more of. =)

Have also noticed that on line-of-action.com, whenever one of their pics of kids comes up, it's REALLY DIFFICULT to draw. I've noticed that most of the students posting their work are only doing adult/nude figures, so I guess maybe I should filer down to only the adult/nude stuff too, until I've perfected my "ideal proportions", can follow the body under clothing a bit better, and know foreshortening really well.

On the other hand, it's a challenge... and maybe I shouldn't be encouraging my brain to think in terms of one limited set of "correct" proportions?

I don't really know. =/

It probably doesn't really matter until I move beyond the basic ribcage-and-joints mannequin anyway. =P

[liviuc]

Today's set of gestures:

I found myself drifting into 60 second poses, as I was starting to get shapes and energy and poses which I liked, and which seemed to demand a bit of extra time and effort. Of course, as soon as I doubled my time, I started to drift towards doubling that and starting to detail things further... but I'm resisting the urge, and trying to stick to gestures, albeit I think I like them better around the 60 second mark, as there's a little more opportunity to get things right.

[liviuc]

I did some longer-form gesture drawings this time, around 2 minutes, on WeirdOwl's advice -- and when I ran into a really crazy pose, I took a little longer and tried to get the construction right.

I feel like I start to get things a bit wrong when I have more time, because I start to look at the volumes and the negative space, and lose sight of the 'construction' side of it. That is, I copy in 2D a bit more, and then kindof 'conform' the outline to what I drew... which might explain why I feel like this kind of exercise doesn't work for me, a lot of the time.

Going to try and force myself to do the fast-construction side before I start getting into details and outlines and negative space, from now on. Already interested to try a few more difficult poses, and try to break them down a bit better.

[ghostmonster]

your breakdown of the little girl doing the gymnastics is very well done

[liviuc]

Thanks kindly -- I've actually been putting in some effort to try and make this part of my regular art practice: breaking down tricky gestures into construction, to try and capture the body's anatomy in a properly 3D way.

Would love to get some feedback on my approach - trying my best to get things right, but I feel it takes a lot of the life out of the poses, breaking them down like this... and honestly I'm not satisfied at all with my linework, etc., but it seems quite out of reach right now to be doing this level of construction/detail and still have good enough line-quality for stuff to look 'artistic'.

[Frygidal]

Your constructions are really nice! I especially like the girl at the bottom, looks so good in perspective. I think you will always loose some flow when making more details, figure drawing is to exaggerate the gesture and then when you build anatomy over it it won't look stiff, on the other hand when your figure drawing is already stiff then anatomy on top will look even worse. So you are doing very good job on your constructions but you want to learn too much stuff at once do some 30-60s poses for flow, some constructions of poses you liked most afterwards and then learn some anatomy on different body parts - you will learn faster that way.

[liviuc]

In case you’re interested where my updates are, this month I’ve been contributing them here:

✒ Brushtober 2020!

Hello everyone! It's that time of the year again - #Brushtober2020 time! Follow the prompt list and share your creative creations with fellow Cubebrush members in this topic! Good luck and have fun! Rules: 🔹 1. Draw, paint or sculpt the daily subject 🔹 2. Post it here in this topic or on social media and tag us @cubebrush with #brushtober2020 🔹 3. Repeat - we'll feature our favourites every day of October on social media! Here's our own alternative list for the month, share it around…

Please support me in attempting Brushtober. It’s been very difficult for me, but I am pushing myself to complete as many finished submissions as I can.